Hot Flashes!

[Alohamora]

... I would be fermenting some white grape wine...

Where can I get preservative free grape juice? either red or white?

[anthropositor]

Try the supermarket first.  Any preservatives will be listed in the ingredients.  Ascorbic acid is fine.

[Polkadot]

Hope you find what works for you Aloha! So glad you started this thread. I don't get wet at night I get absolutely drenched!!! Feels like somebody hooked me up to a sprinkler system. Get sooo tired of changing sheets every single day. Get sooo tired of waking up in the night, getting sooo hot. I'm miserable.  Please let us know what works for you!!! 

[Alohamora]

Hi Polkadot, that sounds awful. I used to think that ladies who complained about hot flashes were just whiners. Now I know better.

The only thing that's had a clearly definable effect for me is giving up caffiene. I still have one caffinated beverage with lunch, but that's it. I felt a big improvement within a day or two of cutting way back on caffiene.

The Black Cohosh may have helped a bit, but it definately gave me headaches so no more of that one.

Wine at bedtime didn't make any difference. 

[trish_j]

hot flashes, do i know what you mean, i have been suffering for 2 years, i was 28 and had a complete hysterectomy, our bedroom is an iceburg. i freeze my husband out, in the middle of the winter i sleep with it open, that wy when i get hot, i cn throw the covers off, i'm not sure when they will subside, as far as you not wnting to take the estrogen pills i dont blame you, i was on them for a year and really found no difference, recently before i was diagnosed with hs, i had the large boil like thing on my breast and was terrified of breast cancer, it scared me so much i went off my estrogen and hve dedcided not to tke them again, i was informed that because of my age without the estrogen i may end up in a wheelchair at age 50 because of bone loss, however i also know that the estrogen has a high rate of cancer, so making the choice of one or the other, at least i'll still be alive in the wheelchair!

[Polkadot]

Aloha i switched to decaf. guess it still has some caffene. but thats all that i have.
still drink green tea. doesn't have much caffene though.
maybe i'll stop drinking that for awhile   
really don't want to give up my tea. 
glad you've had some improvement Aloha!   

[LIGA girl]

I decided to post my experience here in the belief that it may help some of you come to a decision about whether to accept treatment for your hot flashes .... my problem may be different from yours, but here is the advice I got.....

I went to see my endocrinologist on Monday (I see him for a different reason as well) and I told him of the excessive sweating I have been getting. He said it could be menopausal hot flashes, but didnt sound entirely typical of them as I dont usually get them during the night. I had thought they were a side effect of prednisone which I take in large doses, but he said no. He suggested I take oestrogen and that if this improves them, I continue to take it. If it doesn't improve them, he suggests I need to be checked out further to find out what is causing them. I suggested that taking the hormone would make me a cancer risk (my grandmother died of breast cancer), but he said that if I took it as a short term measure (6 mths - 2 years) it was very unlikely. He also said that some women have hot flashes for a couple of months/years while others have them for decades.

His sole reason for suggesting the oestrogen as a treatment was for my comfort, as he said that I was getting so much discomfort from the other drugs I am taking as well as from my skin disease that I may as well take some relief where it can be offered.

I haven't started taking the oestrogen yet, but am going to tomorrow. What he says makes sense to me and it is in part a diagnostic thing too - other things can cause excessive sweating and I need to rule out the easiest ones first. Also, the sweating is so bad it does cause me distress when I cant go out without my hair being wet and I sometimes need to change clothes several times a day. I also have a lot of respect for this doctor and every other doctor I am treated by thinks highly of him. He is a leader in his field in this area.

[Alohamora]

With the warmer weather I've been having more problems, as the slightest bit of physical overheating will trigger a hot flash.

Every now and then I catch myself thinking that cancer 20 years from now would not be too high a price to pay for some relief now. 

I did find and article that filled in most of the gray areas in my understanding of why the hot flashes occur http://www.mercola.com/2001/jul/4/hrt.htm
I'm going to try increasing my intake of phytoestrogens. if that doesn't work, a progesterone cream is the next step.

[LIGA girl]

Hi Aloha

I am finding that as the weather cools here I am going through the opposite. On the cooler days I function much better while on the really hot hunid days that we also have I am virtually non functional and so sweaty and irritable that I find it hard to do anything. If I can get into air conditioning on those days (I dont have it at home) I am much better as soon as I cool down. I have also been taking the oestrogen for a few weeks, but on the hot days it doesnt help at all. Any exertion is incredibly difficult.

I will read the link you posted to find out a bit more about it. Thanks ...

LG

[Alohamora]

I just realized that I have gotten through the entire day without a hot flash. 

Now, if I could just sleep through an entire NIGHT without waking up having to throw off the blankets, that would be just wonderful.

[Alohamora]

Something is working. Day 2 of no daytime flashes and only one that woke me overnight.

[totalfolly]

Something is working. Day 2 of no daytime flashes and only one that woke me overnight.

I'm glad you're getting some relief! 

totalfolly

[anthropositor]

This problem seems to cross all national boundaries.  It would also appear that most of the ways of dealing with it have some pretty serious trade-offs to consider.  I would be very hesitant to  reach for the various refined and concentrated estrogens at any dosage with or without the advice of a physician prior to considering some other factors.  My current mindset is pretty skeptical of the widespread use of hormones and steroids in general as a first resort.

As an experimentalist, I almost always begin by doing the least invasive thing which might ameliorate a given problem.

It is probably possible to hurt yourself even by eating foods which are high in phytoestrogens to excess, but by comparison the risks are certainly less.

I think too, that the mindset of the medical establishment is very much in the opposite direction.  In the field of birth control and in the use of animal based hormones and synthetic steroids, the evidence is pretty clear that the experts have been reckless.

Another area in which we really seem to have gone overboard has been in the use of antibiotics.  I think it is probable that the majority of women who have a major problem with "hot Flashes" have had considerable exposure to birth control pills, cortisone and other steroidal medications, and antibiotics of a considerable variety.

If you are in a position that makes it impossible to entirely eliminate the use of these substances (and I think many of you are) what can be done that might be of help?

If the use of an antibiotic is required, try to minimize the prescribed dosage by letting the doctor know of your concerns.  Many of the antibiotics are given with the order to refrain from consumming dairy products.
In careful collaboration with your doctor you should devise ways of incorporating yogurt in your diet between doses.

Next I would use the estrogens from plant sources as much as possible in the form of whole foods such as yams and sweet potatoes, and in particular red clover sprouts.

Red clover sprouts are as easy to grow as alfalfa sprouts.  You do not even need to grow them separately.  Combined, they make perhaps the most nutritious salad you could possibly eat.  If you like a bit of tanginess you might want to add a few radish seeds to the mix, but I would be very careful about that.  I would also be careful about hot peppers in the diet.  Let me put it more strongly.  If you are having trouble with hot flashes, try going entirely without foods which are hot to the palate for a while.

Just try the alfalfa and red clover sprout combination and eat more yams and sweet potatoes and other vegetables high in phytoestrogens.  I suspect the problems will reduce substantially in severity.  Let me know how it works out.

[itchychick]

I think too, that the mindset of the medical establishment is very much in the opposite direction.  In the field of birth control and in the use of animal based hormones and synthetic steroids, the evidence is pretty clear that the experts have been reckless.

What kind of evidence are you referring to, anthro?

[LIGA girl]

Something is working. Day 2 of no daytime flashes and only one that woke me overnight.

This is really exciting Aloha. Do you think it is the phytoestrogens helping?

In my case, the flashes only became a problem after I started taking prednisone, and I am now taking oestrogen to counteract them. It is working. I have done this on the advice of my endocrinologist. I would really love to be drug free and am hoping that one day I get there ..... but the effects of the flashes are really debilitating I found and to be free of them is a huge improvement in the quality of my life.

[Alohamora]

Hi Liga,

3rd day of no daytime hot flashes! Yipeee! 

I'm not really sure what did it, I made 3 changes at once (desparation!)  I'm taking phyto estrogens in the form of flax seed oil w/ lignans and red clover extract and a small dab of progesterone cream. I'd like to stop this cream because it's making my skin (pompholyx) worse.

Anthro, where do you get seeds for red clover sprouts?

[LIGA girl]

Congrats Aloha! Keep us updated....

[Alohamora]

Oh, one thing I forgot to mention. Drink lots of water! It can help cool off from a flash faster and I think it has a slight impact on reducing the severity of flashes.

Avoiding caffine helped a bit too.

What didn't help
vitamin E
evening primrose oil
black cohosh (headaches may have kept me from using enough)
dhea
wine

[anthropositor]

Itchy,
Even the medical authorities are pretty clear that overuse of antibiotics worldwide has led to super-resistant diseases for which we have no good answers.  To be fair, it has not always been the doctors at fault.  At least not directly.  And they have been trying to reduce the effects of "patient pressure."  But the correction has been much too little, much too late.

We have had many decades of adding monumental amounts of a great variety of antibiotics to animal feeds as well, not just to cure isolated instances of disease, but to get the stock to market more profitably.  The antibiotics we take, and that we feed to our farm animals go through and enter the environment, affecting everything.  Many of our insecticides and herbicides are hormone mimics.  They often work by disrupting reproductive cycles in some way.

We don't even have a clue what is causing the current crisis with the bees.  In truth, we may find that the current problem cannot be attributed to one single cause, but to the synergy of several unrelated causes.  The same goes for a wide variety of other peculiar extinctions going on.  Notably frogs as well are in a lot of trouble.

The use of hormones is similarly out of control.  The complexities of the resulting problems seem well beyond the capacity of our scientific establishment to sort out.  When I was a boy, girls began developing visibly at twelve or thirteen.  Now it is often eight or nine.

Even in the household pet kingdom, very strange things are happening.  When I was a boy, cats often had litters of ten to thirteen kittens.  A more usual number now around my place is four or five.  My dog was the best of a litter of five, but in that case I was pretty active in the limitation of the size of the litter for the health of the mother.  I have taken no measures to limit the size of the cat litters at all. 

In the 1940's doctors gave out the newly developed amphetamines very readily.  It took a long time to realize how addictive they were And the earliest users of cortisone, a very useful hormone, had a considerable number of serious side-effects.  You could argue that this is all ancient history.  But many of us here can attest to the fact that the mistakes are continuing apace.

We patients also need to accept a portion of the responsibility.  We need to learn much more about how our bodies work and reduce our dependence on the "experts."  We need to stop haphazardly slapping over-the-counter ointments and lotions on our skin without knowing anything about them.

For decades we were taught that margarine was much better for us than butter.  Now, prevailing opinion is that hydrogenated fats are dangerous indeed.

We have been made into salt addicts by our food industry.  Salt is even added to prepared baby foods so that the salt addicted mother, who naturally tastes the food before she feeds it to her little one will find it tasty enough to buy.  She is the ultimate decider of what the baby will get to eat and the baby food companies know it.  And she thinks her baby is misbehaving when he spits the crap out.

Here in the USA we are blaming our schools for all the junk food they have been serving up in the cafeterias and vending machines.  But I see what parents are buying for their kids to eat.  It is appalling!

And I too have a difficult time getting enough vegetables into my diet.  I too drink more soda pop than I should. 

MY cataracts did not come out of nowhere.  I probably contributed to their development in a variety of ways.  My current battle with increasing blood pressure is also, at least in part, my own ignorance and inattention catching up with me.

And I pay closer attention than most.

[itchychick]

Mmmm.  I can't disagree with anything you've said, anthro.

Your example of antibiotic use is right on the money.  Our paediatrician (who is excellent, btw) does not prescribe antibiotics for common things like ear infections, but she will occasionally write the script and say, "fill it if you think he needs it", for example, if she sees us before the start of a weekend.  Sometimes the temptation for the quick fix is great, and I am sure many parents succumb... I am equally sure that the doctor does this because of parent's demanding it.

As far as early puberty goes, I think there are factors that we aren't even aware of.  A few weeks ago, our local paper ran a lengthy story about a chemical used in the manufacture of plastic containers (the kind used for water bottles).  These chemicals have been shown to mimic estrogen in the body, and are suspected as a contributor to early puberty... who knew?  Moreover, I certainly don't remember such a plethora of bottled water available when I was little.  If you wanted a drink, it was out of the tap, or from the drinking fountain in the park.  Quite a price we're paying for convenience.

I do find it a bit scary though.  Even though we are done with building our family, I have elected to remain on the birth control pill, as the regulation of my cycle seems to help keep my blood disorder in control as well... monthly hormonal fluctations often triggered my condition.  I do worry though, about what the long term effects might be...  But as so many members here decide with the choice to take oral and topical steroids, that seems to be the lesser between two evils at the moment.